Back pain may affect 80% of certain populations at some time in their lives. It comes in many forms, from lower, middle, or upper back pain to low back pain with sciatica. Common back pain causes include trauma injury, birth defects, tumors, nerve and muscular problems, degenerative disc disease, and arthritis. It is estimated that from 1 to 10% of back pain suffers may require surgery to attempt to relieve the problem.
Examples of specific causes of back pain that may result in surgery being required include: bulging or ruptured disks, sciatica, osteoarthritis, spinal stenosis, scoliosis and osteoporosis. Although the physical cause of the back pain itself may have injured the nerve tissue within and near the spine prior to surgical relief. Even though surgery is typically intended to relieve the cause of the pain, the surgery may itself damage the nerves which are longitudinally within and laterally disposed throughout the spinal column along with non-neural tissue such as; muscle, bone, ligaments, blood vessels and other tissues. Although non-neural tissue tends to regrow with time, nerves of the central nervous system spinal column generally do not regrow or repair.
Injury to the spinal cord or central nervous system can be one of the most devastating and disabling injuries possible. Depending upon the severity of the injury, paralysis of varying degrees can result. Paraplegia and quadriplegia often result from severe injury to the spinal cord.
Damage of the peripheral nervous system damage has been known to heal, although at a very slow rate, in adults. It had been long thought that once damaged, the nerves in adults of the central nervous system do not regenerate and cannot be caused to regenerate within the environment of the central nervous system. Any regeneration of injured nerves in the central nervous system of mammals had been found to occur, if at all, only within a very short period immediately after the injury occurs. After this short period expires, such nerves have not been found to regenerate.
Ongoing efforts in several technological fields are being made to find treatments to repair damaged nerves particularly of the central nervous system.
Electrical stimulation is used to stimulate nerve cell regeneration. For example, stimulating regeneration and repair of damaged spinal nerves through electrodes delivering direct current intravertebrally proximal to the site of spinal nerve injury has been described. US App. No. 20060167527 by Femano. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,140 by Borgens et al., describes applying an oscillating electrical field to the central nervous system to regenerate nerve cells. These devices have the drawback of generally require long term implantation within the patient's body.
Additional work is being done on finding ways to block proteins that inhibit nerve repair in adults or administer agents to enhance the regeneration of neuron cells. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,776,984 by Schwartz discloses a method of treatment of degenerative neurologic diseases provides for the administration of therapeutically effective amounts of an enhancement agent, such as thrombopoietin, to enhance the regeneration of neuron cells. In addition, work is ongoing to stimulate nerve regeneration in mice with damaged optic nerves by turning off proteins that keep adult nerve cells from growing. However, these therapeutic agents generally are not specific with regard to neuron cells, also having impacts on other tissues creating unwanted side effects throughout a patient's body.